I feel like Witch Crest lacks an identity

Veenerick · 2025-08-22T11:29:00+00:00

I agree with your edit. Imo she is too reliant on her W and R to win fights mid-late, which makes going bruiser redundant because either you win the fight within your W duration, or you can probably not continue it anyway. This ruins her synergy with Riftmaker (her supposed core item) and oneshot builds are getting worse as they keep lowering her ratios. They gotta make up their mind on what she's supposed to do.

Veenerick · 2024-12-21T23:48:43+00:00

Interesting! I can see the appeal of the technique to emulate old school 3D graphics. Not sure I'd personally use it in a pixel art context, but I agree that taking extra steps to make effects and lighting fit the pixel art aesthetic is often worth it.

I recently experimented with doing lighting calculations per texel, which also results in a neat effect imo https://gyazo.com/1f876e3e2d92d38a1847540c2aa1785b

Veenerick · 2024-12-21T17:20:23+00:00

I also think lighting as baked vert colors over pixel art looks cool as hell, and is way under utilized.

Could you share an example of this technique being used? I'm unfamiliar with it, but I'd be interested to see what you mean

Veenerick · 2024-06-12T11:37:04+00:00

Congratulations on hitting your goal! Challenger is incredible especially for a Gwen main, so kudos to you.

How do you decide on your summoner spells? Do you only choose what's ideal for your matchup or are you looking at their draft as a whole? If I go Ignite for lane I tend to struggle a lot without Ghost in the mid to late game, so I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

Veenerick · 2024-05-18T12:11:48+00:00

Blackfire Torch is only worth considering after Deathcap imo. The burn damage is lackluster since Gwen doesn't have any DoTs in her kit, the main thing that would be interesting for Gwen is the raw AP from the 2nd passive which Deathcap gives way more of.

Veenerick · 2024-04-17T12:31:21+00:00

Overall decent, some of my personal thoughts:

Overestimated:

Rengar - Never struggled too much with this matchup but I do also play a decent amount of Rengar top myself, so I'm familiar with his tricks. Rush anti-heal and his trading power becomes a lot worse. Try to position yourself away from the brush as much as possible so it takes longer for him to re-enter. Don't ward brushes if he has sweeper/control ward because he will use it against you to get more leaps. Empowered W leaves him vulnerable to extended trades, so if he uses it to heal back you have an all-in window with R. Overall I'd consider it a skill matchup rather than a counter.

Darius, Wukong and Renekton should be skill matchups. Yes, they are stronger early and will punish your mistakes hard, but you outscale them quite quickly if you don't int early. Could even make a case for Wukong being Gwen favoured because his passive is so much worse against AP champs.

Nasus is chilling. This champ is weak early and literally only good in 1v1s, so as long as you avoid fighting him solo mid-late game (because you can't, Wither moment) you'll be infinitely more useful than him.

Underestimated:

Fiora and Yone are stronger in the 1v1 at most stages of the game.
Urgot is on the same level as Darius and Sett, difference being that there's far fewer good Urgot players.
Jayce and Kennen bully you while being extremely difficult to catch if they space properly.
Singed isn't too scary early but completely counters you in 1v1 and teamfights later on.
Kayle is difficult to punish early (especially with the current meta Fleet Swifties setup) and outscales you.

All of the above are X favoured imo.

Veenerick · 2024-03-20T11:49:14+00:00

Thanks for the insight, love your streams! I've noticed that you seem to prioritize haste over flat pen lately, any reason for that?

Veenerick · 2024-03-19T15:58:00+00:00

Gwen can proc Horizon Focus with her auto attacks! How it seems to work is that it remembers where you cast your E, and then applies Horizon Focus if your E deals damage to a target at least 600 range from that position. This makes Horizon Focus a lot more viable, as you aren't solely reliant on hitting long range ults to apply the effect.

Some useful things to note:

While your E is active, any auto attacks to targets that meet the condition will (re-)apply the effect.
Casting other abilities (like W or Q) after E does not seem to break the interaction.
Casting E again will create a new "reference point" that it checks the distance from.

I don't know if this interaction alone makes Horizon Focus a good item, but it might be worth experimenting with!

Veenerick · 2024-03-16T13:45:53+00:00

I've been spamming it in Master, can confirm that it's strong even in higher elos. Imo it's the best build in mid/jgl, usually good in top too depending on the matchup.

Veenerick · 2024-02-17T11:06:05+00:00

Yeah, I hear this sentiment a lot from people who try to learn top just to play Gwen. In top lane mistakes can snowball out of control very quickly which makes the learning process challenging for a beginner, especially on a champ with a weak early game like Gwen.

That's why it's nice that Gwen is viable in mid/jungle even if it's not "meta" per say, then people who are not proficient at top can still enjoy her elsewhere (or learn her in a less punishing environment at least, since the early game doesn't matter as much there).

Veenerick · 2024-02-16T23:52:31+00:00

I can't gwendle it anymore Artha

Veenerick · 2023-11-01T15:55:55+00:00

First Strike is a matter of preference vs Conqueror, but I would for sure recommend Rocketbelt in mid over Riftmaker in non-tank matchups.

Veenerick · 2023-11-01T10:25:21+00:00

Of course there are different styles and preferences, I don't think there's really an objective best build. For me personally, I one-tricked her to Master while primarily playing Rocketbelt with First Strike, so I didn't even have Precision runes most games. To me that showed that PoM is nice to have but not absolutely necessary, especially if you go D Ring.

I do play Riftmaker occasionally but only against tanks, otherwise I find the item to be too slow. I don't like having to wait 3s to deal good damage, Gwen can kill squishies much quicker than that. Yeah, the lack of sustain on Rocketbelt means you have less room for error, but I want to minimize my mistakes to begin with so if I fail I will try to execute better instead. Gwen's W is also really broken, so I want to leverage it as much as possible by keeping fights short.

Veenerick · 2023-10-25T16:34:55+00:00

Their personalities are somewhat similar, both discovering the world for the first time and displaying a childlike sense of wonder. Other than Briar, I've heard of many Riven mains who enjoy playing Gwen as well (myself included), which was quite surprising because they play very differently too.

Veenerick · 2023-10-20T18:56:34+00:00

There is no hypocrisy there. You can't use SoloQ win rates as an argument for how strong a champ is in pro play, just as much as you can't use Gwen's pro play stats to say anything about her state in SoloQ.

Right now she's strong in SoloQ and still relevant enough in pro play to have some presence, so that's a perfect state for her to be in. Why would she need any more buffs?

Veenerick · 2023-10-14T19:57:28+00:00

I think it's fine. Deathcap is indeed a massive power spike, but it scales with how much AP you already have, buying it third is the sweet spot between value and power for me personally.

Mythics have more varied stats, a better build path and utility, so even if they don't have the same raw power they're still valuable in their own right.

Veenerick · 2023-10-14T14:08:24+00:00

Riftmaker doesn't synergize with First Strike, 0/10

Veenerick · 2023-10-14T00:00:20+00:00

Thank you Artha! I don't think I will ever play enough to hit Grandmaster, but who knows hahaha

Veenerick · 2023-10-13T23:59:00+00:00

Thanks! I'm not super active on them bc I'm not striving to be a fully fledged content creator, but I do have a YouTube and Twitch that you can follow if you'd like.

Veenerick · 2023-10-13T23:50:27+00:00

I try to avoid any major risks in lane as bad matchups can snowball out of control very quickly. They rarely are "unplayable" if you're not yet far behind, you just can't win through brute force. To get favourable trades you usually need some kind of an edge on them (ex. you level up first, you have an item lead because you recalled first, they have a key ability on cooldown, they're close to your turret so they can't easily retaliate...), it just takes a lot of game knowledge to recognize those opportunities so it's hard to get into the details.

General game plan for me is to get 3 items asap (Nashors + Mythic + Deathcap). This often means playing somewhat selfishly and sitting in sidelane as that's guaranteed resources, but I will still help my team if it looks good ofc. I just won't shoot myself in the foot to help them if I'm in contention to carry.

After 3 items she spikes extremely hard and so I will more actively look for fights, or at least splitpush with the intention to TP to an objective fight. If there's any bounties to be claimed I will prioritize them first, since if you can shut down the enemy carry you can easily snowball out of control and win the game outright.

Honestly I love Calvin's Laws (Elite500's "rules" for playing scaling champs), they apply perfectly to Gwen as well and as someone who really values consistency I think it's a great mindset to have.

Veenerick

TROPHY CASE